1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a projector.
2. Related Art
In the past, there is known a projector including a light source device, a light modulating device that modulates a light beam emitted from the light source device, and a projection optical device that projects the light beam modulated by the light modulating device (see, for example, JP-A-2007-333773).
In the projector described in PTL1, in order to reduce the size of the projector, as the light source device, an LED (Light Emitting Diode) light source is adopted rather than a light source lamp of an discharge type.
This LED light source includes a configuration in which a light emitting device (a light emitting section) is mounted on an LED circuit board.
The light modulating device (a liquid crystal device) is electrically connected to, via a flexible printed circuit board, a control board that controls the operations of the light modulating device and the LED light source. A signal is output from the control board via the flexible printed circuit board, whereby the light modulating device is controlled.
Similarly, a connector provided on the LED board and the control board are connected by the flexible printed circuit board and a signal is output from the control board via the flexible printed circuit board, whereby the LED light source is controlled.
Optical components such as the light source device, the light modulating device, and the projection optical device are usually housed in a container-like housing.
As such a housing, in order to draw around the flexible printed circuit board connected to the light modulating device to the outside of the housing, in general, a cutout is formed on the sidewall of the housing.
The sidewall of the housing needs to have a height dimension substantially the same as the width dimension of the flexible printed circuit board (substantially the same as the height dimension of the light modulating device) in order to cover a connecting portion of the light modulating device and the flexible printed circuit board.
Among the optical components (the light source device, the light modulating device, the projection optical device, etc.) housed in the housing, the light modulating device has a size limited according to the number of pixels, a pixel pitch, and the like. On the other hand, since the other optical components are lenses and the like, the sizes of the other optical components can be set smaller than the size of the light modulating device (the sectional shapes of the other optical components orthogonal to an optical axis can be set smaller than the sectional shape of the light modulating device).
Therefore, a dimension obtained by adding the height dimension of the light modulating device or the height dimension of the sidewall of the housing to the thickness dimension of the bottom portion of the housing is practically the thickness dimension of the projector. There is a problem in that it is difficult to reduce the thickness of the projector to about a dimension substantially the same as the height dimension of the light modulating device.
In particular, when the projector is configured as a Pico-projector (also referred to as micro-projector or nano-projector in some case) used together with an electronic device (e.g., incorporated in the electronic device) such as a digital camera, a cellular phone, or a notebook PC (Personal Computer), it is difficult to design the projector to a desired thickness dimension.